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John Allman

If you’ve ever wandered the aisles at the video store or surfed the DVR pay-per-view options and seen a bunch of movies that you’ve never heard of, chances are John has watched them. Why? He loves movies. All kinds of movies. Good, bad, so-bad-they’re good, even the truly unwatchable ones. He mostly loves horror and science-fiction and drive-in exploitation movies that most upstanding model citizens wouldn’t dare watch. Then he writes up his thoughts so you can decide - watch, don’t watch or avoid at all costs. Sometimes he even gets to talk to the cool folks who make some of your favorite films.

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A Conversation With: Jim Mickle

Posted Aug 7, 2011 by John Allman

Updated Aug 7, 2011 at 01:19 PM

You ever watch a movie and think, wow, the people responsible for this really went all-out. They made the movie they wanted to make with no apologies, no excuses, no regrets. That’s pretty damn cool.

It’s rare to come across that kind of film.

“Stake Land” is that kind of film.

It’s the best post-apocalyptic, vampire plague, coming of age story you’re likely to see. It has moments of gory good inspiration and moments that you can just tell were thought through carefully to achieve maximum impact. It has Hollywood-style action, a cool ‘80s-era training montage, wickedly nasty vampires the likes of which haven’t been seen since “30 Days of Night” and a stone-cold creepy religious cult that figures out how to use the vamps to their advantage.

It’s the second collaboration between director Jim Mickle and actor Nick Damici, who share writing credit on “Stake Land.”

Mickle, who lives in Manhattan, NY, took time to talk by phone recently to BVB: Blood, Violence and Babes about making his second feature film, about pulling together an all-star supporting cast and about making homemade crossbows.

Check it out:

For lack of a better analogy, it really felt like you swung for the fences with this film, and completely killed it, by the way.

JM: Awesome. I think in a lot of ways, we did kind of swing for the fences. Some of it was slight frustration at not being able to pull stuff off the first time with ‘Mulberry.’ That’s great to hear.

“Stake Land” is the second film co-written by Mickle and star Nick Damici. The pair penned Mickle’s directorial debut, “Mulberry Street,” which was one of After Dark’s 8 Films to Die For back during the film festival’s second run in 2007. It was arguably the standout film of that year’s After Dark collection, a gritty, low-budget thrill ride about a pandemic in New York City set off by rats. The infected slowly turned into rat-like creatures, terrorizing the remaining survivors trapped in a brownstone apartment building.

Mickle said the seed for “Stake Land” grew out of the weeks and months after “Mulberry Street” was released that he and Damici went looking for the next project to collaborate on together. They had optioned the rights to a book, but that process had stalled.

JM: This one is much more his baby in a lot of ways. After “Mulberry Street” we optioned a book. It was kind of frustrating, having a hard time pushing forward. Then at some point, out of desperation, I came to him and said, ‘Let’s do another ‘Mulberry’ type thing, kind of low-budget.

Mickle said the idea initially was to create a web feature. Damici took it from there.

JM: Really, we sort of shot some ideas around and the next morning, I woke up and he sent me the first 10 pages. It wound up changing a ton, [but] the first 10 pages were almost always the same – the kid’s in the car, the creature’s in the trunk, going with the flashback. We worked with what we wanted it to be over time. He would send me these little episodes. It wasn’t until the idea for the feature come around, we ended up finding the post-apocalyptic vibe. It was right around the presidential election, how the country seemed so divided. It gave us some glue. We had tons of great little episodes, like 30. Some of them we hung onto.

Some of the best scenes in “Stake Land” are moments that other directors might have focused on as a money shot. Here, Mickle and Co. treat them as something happening in the background, merely a piece of the bigger picture.

There’s a scene early on when the vampires are first exposed and one of the nasty, feral creatures has just feasted on a family, and Mister and Martin shine a light up into a corner of a barn and you get just a glimpse of a vamp sucking the last bit of life from an infant before casually dropping the baby to the ground. It’s one of those ‘did I just see that?’ moments that you have to rewind because it’s so cool.

Much of that was intentional, Mickle said.

JM: Pretty soon after, the scene where they kill the two Brotherhood guys in the street – in the barn we wanted to have a little Hollywood flair – [but] the one with human on human violence, [we] tried to play a lot of it wide shots, long lens, give it a feel of you happened to walk down the street and all of a sudden this was a scene you wandered up onto. After ‘Mulberry,’ I wanted to show I can do these action scenes. Give me some money. We can compete.

Another such moment comes after Mister and Martin have rescued Sister. They are taking part in a town celebration, one of the few moments of levity in the film. Suddenly, all hell breaks loose and the Brotherhood attacks, dropping vampires out of the sky like feral clusterbombs that immediately hit the ground and begin ripping out throats.

Much of the scene is shot in one continuous take, which is fairly remarkable given the complexity of the shot and the skill needed to pull it off. Most seasoned directors wouldn’t even consider it.

JM: Ryan the DP (Ryan Samul, director of photography) and I had listed like 40 set-ups, then we wound up and said, ‘Let’s try to pull this off in one long take.’ That was a 3-minute take. Originally, I was going to go all Michael Bay. We wound up saying this is about the emotional peaks.

That’s the captivating thing about “Stake Land,” that it does have those moments, whole scenes, that seem very personal. Little slices of film that you can sense the time and care that went into the creation of that singular instance. Like a painter making sure his composition is perfect.

Mickle said many of those moments came from Damici’s first, fevered draft as the excitement over the idea became infectious and details began to take form.

JM: Some of them existed from the very beginning. As soon as I read, I said ‘This is perfect, don’t touch it.’ He was writing them and I was still working. He was sending me pictures. He was making his own costume. We didn’t even have a greenlight yet.

Some of those moments made it onto the “Stake Land” DVD extras – scenes of Damici making his own working crossbow and firing it into his wall.

JM: He fleshed out his own world, and I think that became very contagious. The other actors followed suit. I think it’s interesting people set out to make an apocalyptic movie. This started out as a coming of age story, a mentor and pupil story, and the end of the world aspect almost became the dressing on top.

One of the surprising elements of “Stake Land” is the strength of its supporting cast. Each of the roles seemed perfectly picked for the actor portraying it. Danielle Harris, in particular, who has become such an iconic scream queen, really excelled in a role unlike any she’s recently played. And she has this amazing scene when she is first introduced where she is singing at a café. Was that really her singing?

JM: That was really her. She actually did it on set and was very good on set. When she got there, she said I’ve never sang outside my own shower. Weirdly enough, she will kind of go for anything.

Harris helped him and Damici discover a different side of her character, Belle, who is pregnant and alone, living at an outpost when she first encounters Mister and Martin.

JM: Her character is much different in the script. There was a romantic thing. Then she (Harris) got there and realized her character meant something else, a breath of fresh air, a sign of hope.

Mickle said he recently saw the film in Brazil with an audience. It was a chance to step outside himself and watch it objectively. He said it struck him again how much Harris understood Belle’s role, her purpose.

JM: I think she found that even before Nick and I did.

Another remarkable supporting performance comes from Kelly McGillis, who is completely unrecognizable in the role of Sister, a nun struggling to hold onto her faith as the vampire plague spreads.

JM: She’s great. She’s awesome. I really hope this is a start of a rebirth for her.

McGillis has been noticeably absent from feature films for quite some time since her heyday in the 1980s with “Top Gun” and “Witness.”

JM: We couldn’t cast the part to save our lives. Nobody wanted to read it. The first time you see her, she’s running away from rapists. Not the role that jumps off the page for an actress in her 40s or 50s. A couple of days into shooting, the casting director, who I relied very heavily on, said what about Kelly? I remember laughing at the time, come on. [But] we did throw this Hail Mary. I wrote a letter to her that was very sweet.

Mickle said McGillis actually lived not far from his family’s farm where he shot much of the film. He played up the proximity in his letter asking her to accept the role.

JM: It was 20 minutes away from where she was living. I know that had a lot to do with it.

Another key role in the film is Jebedia Loven, the leader of the Brotherhood, the religious movement using the vampire plague as its chance to establish dominance. Michael Cerveris plays Jebedia, and genre fans will instantly recognize him from the popular TV show “Fringe,” where he plays The Observer, the bald watcher who keeps the balance of time and history in place.

JM: I had never seen “Fringe.” He’s mostly known for…he’s been nominated for three or four Tonys. He was Hedwig. He was Tommy on stage. I think he’s best known for Sweeny Todd with Patti Lupone. Most people in New York know him as a lion of Broadway. I don’t see a lot of Broadway and I’d never seen “Fringe,” but I met him and really liked his vibe.

The character that holds “Stake Land” together though is Mister, played by Damici. He comes across at different points as a cross between Snake Plissken and The Man with No Name, but he never feels contrived or cobbled together. He is in the end a wholly original character driven by demons that never get fully explained.

JM: That was another evolving thing too. I think a lot of the good stuff came from the fact that we were basically in pre-production for a year. I think a lot of the character stuff came from there. Early on, we went really cartoony. We went very far with him. As we started to flesh it out, it became more interesting to underplay him. Both of us are fans of losing dialogue if you don’t need it.

So what’s next for Mickle? Another horror film? Or a stab at a different genre?There is a project in sight, he said. Financing is about complete and he’s hoping to begin production soon.

JM: It’s sort of a violent dark thriller, no monsters. Southern noir, Texas noir. Much closer to films like “Blood Simple” or “Red Rock West.” Sort of a genre I really liked in addition to horror movies. They don’t make them a lot anymore. Knock on wood that’s the next.